The Plymouth Zoo Giraffe Photo
One of the strangest accidental photographs in UFO history: a man photographed a giraffe at Plymouth Zoo in 1972 and found a small sharp-edged disc in the sky when the film came back. He saw nothing at the time. Nobody ever demonstrated what it was, and nobody ever proved it was anything.
What did witnesses see at Plymouth Zoo?
Nothing was seen in the sky at the time. Zoo visitor Wilfred Power photographed a giraffe, and a small, sharply bounded saucer-shaped disc above the giraffe's head was discovered only after the film was developed. The circulated version is explicitly a crop; the full frame and negative have never been publicly examined.
More footage and images of this sighting
What is the official explanation?
No government or military record exists. The case lived entirely in civilian hands: Power gave the print to the Plymouth UFO Research Group in 1980, and it entered the Fortean Picture Library, whose own archival caption commits only to "a possible UFO." A common online attribution to a photographer named David Bryant is a misattribution; every archival source credits Wilfred Power.
What did the witnesses think it was?
Wilfred Power, a private individual on an ordinary zoo visit, about whom no biographical details survive. He never claimed it was a craft; the photo simply showed something he could not explain.
Is the Plymouth Zoo Giraffe Photo real? The two-pass assessment
Pass one: a not-seen-at-the-time daytime disc is consistent with a bird or insect crossing the frame, a film or processing flaw, or a lens artifact, and none of these has been excluded because the negative was never analyzed. Pass two: a sharply bounded disc form rather than a smear, which is less typical of a passing bird. Nothing about the case fits a hoax pattern: an accidental snapshot, modest circulation, no profit motive. Verdict: Unknown. No official narrative exists, no analysis was ever published in either direction, and the photograph remains exactly what its own archive calls it, a possible UFO.
Sources
- www.beamsinvestigations.org/UFO%20Photograph%20taken%20Wilfred%20Power%20in%201972%20during%20a%20visit%20to%20Plymouth%20Zoo,%20Devon,%20UK.htm
- www.topfoto.co.uk/asset/347252/
More cases from this region: UFO sightings in United Kingdom
